ISSN: 1525-898XObservations by and for the vaguely disenchanted by Kevin G. Barkes

Conceived above a saloon, delivered into this world by a masked man identified by his heavily sedated mother as Captain Video,
raised by a kindly West Virginian woman, a mild-mannered former reporter with modest delusions of grandeur and no tolerance
of idiots and the intellectually dishonest.

"Things have taken a turn for the surreal."
-Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) in Saving Private Ryan

So the Federal Communications Commission cowardly refuses to promise television stations they won't be fined for indecency for airing a story about Americans fighting to preserve our liberties, including free speech.

I know what my late father, a World War II veteran, would say about this situation. But he couldn't say it on broadcast radio or television in the country for which he took a bullet.

The first thing I did to steal your election was to make friends with ALL the
manufacturers and code-verifyers of the Electronic Voting Machines. They
were really nice, especially Diebold who gave me $600,000 for my campaign.
Wow, thanks dude!

Next, I had my attack dog, Karl Rove, convince these companies to either
alter the vote totals on the central tabulator machines (simple PCs running
windows using Remote Access Server -- RAS), or reprogram (via a downloadable
software patch) the voting machines themselves so that they would give the
advantage to ME! Isn't America great?!? A little money and some religious
zealotry goes a looooong, loooong way. Oh, the religious zealotry thing?
That's just a cover. I'm not really a Christian -- or at least I don't act
like one. Anyway, I digress.

Did you ever hear the media complaining about how inaccurate the exit polls
were in prior elections? No. That's because they basically ARE accurate.
But this election, the exit polls showed Kerry WAY ahead. No problem. My
buddies rigged the machines (and all they needed to do was rig it in one
state, Ohio, but they took care of at least Florida for me too) not only to
make me squeak by in the important battleground states, like Florida and
Ohio, but they also made sure that when I did get a state that I was expected
to win, the margin was HUGE so that my "popular" vote would make it look like
I had a mandate.

So let's recap how the popular vote thing worked again. Let's say we didn't
want it to look suspicious by taking states that Kerry really would have won
(except for Ohio and Florida, gotta take those! heh heh). So we let him win
there, but in order once again to boost the "popular" vote (I put that in
quotes because as you know, I'm not REALLY popular), we bring my vote tallies
RIGHT UP NEXT to Kerry's, to jack up the "popular" vote as much as possible,
even if I didn't win the state.

Then, with states like North Carolina, we know we're going to steal the state
anyway (at least according to what the exit polls were telling everyone....
and according to the long, long lines of new voters were telling everyone
.... because we all know most of those people were voting for Kerry, not the
status quo), so we just jack the crap out of the vote total to REALLY stuff a
crapload of "popular" votes in my pocket. You see, this way I can get on the
TV and declare that I have a "mandate" and that I'm going to "cash in" on my
political "capital" (which I don't really have of course, but we made it look
that way).

Here's a nice chart to show you what I mean. Take special note of how the
electronic voting machine totals compare to the paper ballot totals. And see
what I mean about North Carolina?

Look folks, if you really want me out of office, first you're going to have
to impeach me. But you know what, if you don't have verifiable paper trails
at the polls like these folks recommend
(http://openvotingconsortium.org/),
and if you don't take these voting machines out of the hands of private
companies that are aligned with one end of the political spectrum, then I'm
gonna just continue to hose you (and then my brother Jeb will be president
too cause we're into this dynasty thing, kind of like my buddies the
Saudis... ain't it cool?!?). Also, in 2006, we're going to steal about five
more senate seats, and then we'll have the "super-majority". That means the
Democrats can't do that confounded fillerbs... fillas.... fillbusters....
CRAP, well, they can't get in the darn way any more and we can pass ANY laws
we want about ANYTHING and put whoever we want on the Supreme court. Ha ha,
then you're REALLY screwed. So if you don't fix this mess (I mean great
system) in two years and have a verifiable voting system nationwide, America
is MINE!!!!! (and Jeb's and my daddy's and Cheney's and Rove's... hey, we
could even pass a law saying I could be president for FOUR MORE YEARS after
2008! That would be SOOO cool!) Anyway, I digress once again.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Fool me once.....", oh CRAP, I
forgot again. Well how about this? "This would be a heck of lot easier if
this was [grammar incorrect] a dictatorship.... just so long as I'm the
dictator. Heh, heh." Well, sorry to say folks, but I got my way. What are
you gonna do about it, huh? Bring it on!!!

The Sunday flight from Pittsburgh didn't begin well. It was almost two hours late and the pilot had decided not to make the flight deck radio available on the audio system.

I've flown United about 100 times in the past two years, and this was only the second time I couldn't listen to the in-flight air traffic control conversations. I actually think the same pilot pulled the plug on both flights.

You may ask, "Is there a reason you need to listen to the ATC transmissions?" A more valid question is: "Is there a reason I shouldn't?" Bear in mind that anybody with a cheap Radio Shack scanner can listen in to the conversations, so it's not like it's a security issue. United makes a big deal about it- so much so, that when one pilot decides I shouldn't be able to hear what's going on, it makes me nervous.

I decide that instead of a neurological disorder, the pilot just likes to assert authority. So I try to doze off.

Then something wonderful happened.

The first officer announced passengers on the right side of the plane should be able to see the aurora borealis, the northern lights.

Not one, but two miracles: a low-latitude aurora, and actually being seated on the correct side of the aircraft to view it.

The light pollution in the city made it impossible to see the aurora from the ground. But when I awoke to go to the bathroom at about 1 a.m., I noticed an odd light flickering outside the window, even without my glasses.

My tenth floor apartment is about 500 feet from the shore of Lake Michigan, and I have an unobstructed view. There's a park at the lakefront, so there aren't many lights and the sky above the lake, of course, is totally dark.

Right at eye level was a beautiful display of the aurora.

For three hours I watched the ribbons of multicolored light cascade across the sky. They were mostly green, but about every ten minutes or so there'd be an eruption of yellow and red that was absolutely breathtaking.

Of course, I was totally worthless yesterday, since I had about a total of three hours' sleep.

But at age 50, I had discovered two things that were previously unknown to me: the beauty of the aurora, and that acute sleep deprivation and excessive caffeine consumption produce the same visual effect.